


Orange Slices

by engagemythrusters



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickfic, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25397716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engagemythrusters/pseuds/engagemythrusters
Summary: Jack and Ianto get a taste of domestic life during some rougher times.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 15
Kudos: 102





	Orange Slices

Ianto drifted somewhere between sleep and consciousness, lulled by the muffled sounds from the kitchen and appeased by the numbness of the drugs.

Owen has said he was lucky to be alive. Tosh had said that was an overstatement. Gwen had looked like it was an understatement. Ianto had only believed Jack, who had stood over the autopsy table, gazing down with a strangely blank face.

If Ianto moved now, he would surely feel where the bullet used to be, through the drugs. Ianto’s body knew what it was supposed to feel like, and it knew when something wasn’t right. Even strange alien drugs couldn’t dull that. 

Thankfully, Ianto didn’t much fancy moving. He really just wanted to sleep. He closed his eyes and drifted more, falling deeper and deeper away from reality and into the void of sleep. 

He wasn’t nearly ready to be awake again when fingers brushed through his hair, rousing him. Ianto found that being awake (or as close to it as he was at the moment) wasn’t as nearly as unpleasant right now as it was in the wee hours of the morning after the Rift spat out another vengeful beast. No, he was actually rather comfortable. 

The bed dipped slightly, and Ianto’s body was made aware of itself and its predicament (though it didn’t seem to care through the tiredness).

“Hi,” Jack said.

Ianto knew he was supposed to say something back, but he was too sleepy to either think of or relay any words.

“Owen said it would be fine if I gave you another dose,” Jack said.

Ianto raised an eyebrow.

“He said he swears it isn’t addictive,” Jack added. “It isn’t morphine.”

Since he still didn’t feel like talking, he shrugged the shoulder that was opposite to the side of his injury. Oh, maybe he still didn’t want to move, on second thought...

“He didn’t say anything about them making you sleepy, though,” Jack said. “Is that just you?”

“Mmm,” Ianto managed. 

Jack gave him a crooked grin. 

“I’m supposed to check it now.”

Ianto wondered just what else Owen had said over whatever phone call they’d had, but his musings were cut mercilessly short when Jack lifted the blankets away. And if  _that_ didn’t just suck the tranquil sleepiness away...

“Sorry.”

Ianto scrounged up enough strength to glare at him. That made Jack throw another smile, more sheepish than amused this time, but he didn’t stop stealing Ianto’s blankets. They gathered around Ianto’s legs when he dropped them to check Ianto’s abdomen.

The gauze wasn’t as bloody this time—only the smallest hint blood showed when Jack tore away the tape and lifted it up. Jack leant closer to the wound, inspecting it further. Ianto watched his face as he did so, looking for any signs of concern or worry. Not a single emotion flicked across Jack’s face. That either meant things were okay or things were really bad. The ambiguity of it should have probably alarmed Ianto, but it didn’t. He figured he was going to be either pronounced fine or dead, and one of those was closer to what he was feeling than the other. Alien drugs could be deceptive, but not  _that_ deceptive. 

“Looks fine,” Jack said after a bit. “I don’t think I have to replace the bandage, either.”

And, with that, he stuck the tape back to Ianto’s stomach. 

“Blankets,” Ianto said.

Jack laughed once. He replaced the blankets over Ianto, arranging them carefully and tucking them over Ianto’s chest. This was more than Ianto asked for, but he supposed he didn’t mind.

“Hungry?”

“Can I eat?” Ianto asked.

Jack sent him a weird look. “You were  _shot_ —you don’t have a bug.”

“But it hit my stomach.”

“Owen said it missed all organs, remember?”

Ianto did not remember.

“You might’ve been asleep for that,” Jack amended. “But you can eat.”

“I just want to sleep,” Ianto said.

Jack shrugged. He bent forward again, kissing Ianto’s forehead, then stood and left the bedroom.

Ianto succumbed to sleep again after a few minutes. This time, he thought he stayed under for a while longer, because when Jack woke him again with another kiss to his forehead, the world was darker outside his window.

“I sliced you an orange,” Jack said.

Because he’d just woken up, words didn’t make much sense to Ianto. He scowled and blinked at Jack. Then, at its own leisurely pace, the statement made itself clear to Ianto, and he looked at the plate in Jack’s hand. 

Sure enough, a sliced orange sat there. Ianto wasn’t entirely certain why an  orange , of all foods, but he was too hungry to comment on the odd choice.

After setting the plate aside, Jack moved some pillows around behind Ianto’s head, and then slowly helped Ianto sit up just the slightest bit more to rest against those pillows. It wasn’t much of an incline, safe enough for his stomach but high enough for eating. 

Jack handed him a slice of orange. Ianto looked at it. It was a disk of orange, peel still wrapped around it. He glanced at the plate and saw that the other slices appeared the same. Circular slices, each with a tear in the peel, just enough so the slices could be unfurled to eat each individual segment.  Odd way to slice an orange, in Ianto’s opinion. But, for some reason, it made the orange taste better. 

Or maybe that was because Jack had sliced the orange. 

Ianto figured the drugs might have gone to his head. Had he been given more while he was out again?

Jack took the empty peel from Ianto and handed him another slice. Ianto couldn’t recall eating the first slice, so he took it that the drugs were definitely messing with him, and therefore felt safe to think that the oranges tasted better because Jack had sliced them. It was okay to be fond of Jack’s oranges if he was drugged.

Ianto finished off the last of the orange slices and sank back deeper into the pillows. Jack set the plate on the nightstand again, then got up and walked around the bed to the other side. He crawled in beside Ianto. 

“Go back to sleep,” Jack said. 

Ianto turned his head so that it was closer to Jack. Jack kissed it. 

Without his permission, Ianto’s eyes closed once more, and he fell asleep before he could thank Jack for the nice oranges.

* * *

Jack lay on his stomach, willing some sleep to catch up to him. It refused to come, which made him feel even more miserable than he already felt.

It was funny. The Immortal Captain Jack Harkness, felled by an alien poison that refused to just let him die. Everything else allowed him the kindness (because it was a kindness, at this point), but not this poison. It just coursed through his system, over and over, not killing him and not letting him heal. Five hours, he'd sat down here, waiting for it to pass. 

Jack shifted slightly. His head spun and his veins burned like ice.

“Ugh,” he said to himself.

He closed his eyes and tried for sleep again.

Sleep still mockingly eluded him, though. Didn’t help that two feet climbing noisily down the ladder into the bunker made his brain rattle uncomfortably around in his head. 

“Ianto?” Jack mumbled.

“I need to check your temperature.”

“What for?” 

“Because Owen said so,” Ianto said.

“Since when do you do what Owen says?” Jack asked, but he rolled over and permitted Ianto to take his temperature.

“Hm,” Ianto said when he read the thermometer.

“Hm?” Jack repeated.

“Well, you haven’t got a fever anymore...”

Frowning down at the thermometer, Ianto left, ascending from the bunker without another word. 

“Uugh,” Jack moaned to himself again.

He threw an arm over his eyes, wishing again to just pass out for a while. Literally pass out. If that was what it took to get some sleep, Jack would  _ happily _ faint. 

But more feet came noisily down the ladder. Jack winced as it echoed through his skull.

"Can you sit up?”

Confused, Jack removed the arm from his eyes, squinting up at Ianto.

In his hands, Ianto held a plate of sliced oranges and a glass of water.

Jack sat up in an instant. 

“You sliced me some oranges?” 

“Owen said you need fluids,” Ianto said, “and it’s been a while since you ate.“ 

“You sliced me oranges,” Jack said, no longer asking.

“Yes.”

He sat down next to Jack on the camp bed, handing him the glass. Jack ignored it, reaching instead for the plate of oranges. Jack noted with great pleasure that they’d been served perfectly—cut into thin disks, all evenly sliced and easily torn open. 

Jack smiled, then leant forward.

“Don’t kiss me!” Ianto pushed Jack back. “Just eat without poisoning me, please.”

Jack sat straight, grinning to himself as he took the first slice.

There was absolutely no way Ianto knew exactly what he’d done. Jack had never told this part of his life before. Those memories stayed locked up in his head, only for him to fall back on in desperate times.

The Boeshane Peninsula didn’t have oranges. It had its own variations of citrus fruits. Jack’s mother used to slice them up like this back when he small, sick, and otherwise unable to cut his own fruits. They were always better when his mother cut them, he recalled. Always. Jack knew, logically, nothing was different than when he himself cut them, but still... 

Jack lost his mother a long, long time ago. Nobody had sliced him any citrus fruit since then (save for the occasional lime in a drink). Now, though, he had a plate of sliced oranges, and a Ianto Jones sitting by his side, watching him eat and not knowing how he’d inadvertently been the kindest, most caring soul Jack had met since his own  _ mother_. 

Jack finished off his oranges, feeling a million times better than before. Ianto took the plate back and handed him the water. Jack downed it quickly. Ianto raised an unimpressed eyebrow at that, but he took the glass back, too, without another word.

“Ianto,” Jack said as Ianto got up to silently leave. “Why oranges?”

Ianto blinked. 

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment. “I just... you gave me oranges, once.”

Jack remembered that—Ianto still had the scar to prove it. Sometimes, late at night, Jack ran his fingers up and down that scar, just to drill into his head that they were both alive, well, and in bed together. 

“Stay,” Jack begged Ianto, suddenly desperate to keep him there.

Ianto gave him a wry smile. “I can’t. I have to finish up for the day.”

Jack nodded, adding the sinking feeling in his chest to his long list of miseries.

Ianto disappeared then, and Jack sprawled back on the camp bed again, trying for a final time to catch some sleep. Really, he only wound up becoming more and more frustrated that sleep wouldn’t come.

For an hour (or perhaps more) he lay like that.

And then, by some grace of the universe, quiet footsteps came down the ladder, and Ianto squeezed himself onto the camp bed beside Jack.

It was by no means comfortable; between the cramped space and the poison, Jack felt disgusting. But with the soothing presence of Ianto beside him and the taste of orange still lingering in his mind, Jack could finally fall asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Love is shown through sliced oranges.  
> Yes, this is another one I wrote at 1am, no it isn’t a edited and no it doesn’t make sense.  
> Thank you for reading! Have a peaceful night!


End file.
